This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. application Ser. No. 14/484,196, which is incorporated by reference herein, and filed on Sep. 11, 2014.
The present invention relates to systems and methods of fluid delivery for effects for a viewer in a seat system.
Disney's Star Tours and Universal Studio's The Simpsons Ride, commercial movie theaters, gaming environments, and training centers (e.g., military, law enforcement, and flight schools) use effects to produce the sensation that one is immersed in the reality displayed on a movie screen.
A motion effect is implemented by synchronizing the seat motion of the viewer to correspond to the displayed scenes. The motion seat systems can be adapted to receive motion signals that move seats to correspond (e.g., synchronize) to other signals (e.g., video and/or audio signals) that are perceived by person(s). For example, the seat system may synchronize seat motions with the displayed motions in a theater to simulate the forces one would experience seated in a vehicle in a chase scene where the vehicle races around a city street.
Another effect is to deliver fluids such as a water mist, a blast of air, wind, and one or more scents to the viewer with the displayed scenes. For example, a system may deliver an orange scent to the viewer while movie displays a character traveling through an orange orchard, deliver a water mist to the viewer when the character travels through a rainy jungle or wind in a storm scene. To the inventors' awareness, the wind effect is implemented by fans hanging in a theater, but this may distract from the viewer's experience and may be noisy. The water mist and scents have been implemented by installing nozzles in a front rail in front of a row of seats or installing the nozzles into the back of the seats in front of the viewers, but either approach is expensive to implement and not practical because the motion of the seats affects the directionality of the fluid delivery. In short, the motion seats may move the viewer out of the path of fluid delivery.